The Game Innovation Lab is the primary research space and think tank for experimental game design within the Interactive Media Division, where new concepts in game design, play, and usability are being developed, prototyped and play tested. The goal of the lab is to nurture concepts that push games beyond their currently defined genres, markets and play patterns and to make breakthroughs in these areas that will be valuable to our research partners and the industry on the whole.
Lab research includes work on educational, activist and experimental projects with a goal of creating a body of knowledge about players, the games they play, and how they play them andusing that knowledge to design games that exhibit new and better play mechanics, create satisfying new social interactions, and take advantage ofinnovative technologies.
Strong ties to the industry and keydevelopers help ensure that lab research centers on areas of innovation that commercial game designers are unable to address because of nature of their product schedules and the allocation of company resources. Ideas are incubated through extensive iteration, play testing, and user feedback.
While there are many areas of game design the members of the lab community are pursuing, the top-level initiatives of the lab focus on the following areas of investigation:
- Game innovation initiative
- Prototyping and play testing research
- Interdisciplinary outreach
- Serious play research
- Social play research
- Experimental genres research
- Narrative play research
- Convergence and cross-media games